The Ciara Phelan Podcast: Eamon Ryan on counselling, family, and the sleeping incident

Mr Ryan said he thinks it’s “healthy” and “useful” to go for counselling, which he said he had many years ago.

He told how he had a happy childhood and was just an “ordinary” person, but he didn’t learn to read or write until he attended secondary school.

“I don’t think I developed until my late 20s in terms of, ‘God I was hopeless in so many different ways’," he said.

“Too much drinking, not great with girls or relationships, but I was happy, I think just happy to be alive and getting on with it.

"I found it [counselling] helped in developing relationships with other people.” Mr Ryan also spoke of how he was “angry” with his father’s absence at home while he was a child, but said that was due to his career in public relations working for AIB.

“We had our problems, like every family," he said. "My dad was working in public relations at the time for AIB, and that meant he was in Doheny & Nesbitts most nights.

“That was the way the world of public relations and journalism worked at that time.

"He had an amazing career and ability to befriend people in that world.

It meant he was absent from home; that was tough, tough on my mother.

But they got through that and I think, for me, it [home] was a very loving place.” Mr Ryan also opens up about his son Tommy, who has a rare form of autism.

He also speaks about the “hurt” caused when he fell asleep during a Dáil session which was held at the Convention Centre during the pandemic. He said it was something that he “deeply regretted”.